Adam Lewis Schroeder

All-Day Breakfast

All Day Breakfast When widowed father and substitute teacher Peter Giller leads an eleventh grade class on a field trip to a plastics factory he thinks the worst that could happen is that the parent volunteers won t s

Title: All-Day Breakfast

Author: Adam Lewis Schroeder

ISBN: 9781771620642

Page: 215

Format: Paperback

When widowed father and substitute teacher Peter Giller leads an eleventh grade class on a field trip to a plastics factory, he thinks the worst that could happen is that the parent volunteers won t show up they don t , the kids will be rude they are or the free lunch will be terrible it is.Then a leaking pipe sprays Peter and the students with a mysterious pink goo aWhen widowed father and substitute teacher Peter Giller leads an eleventh grade class on a field trip to a plastics factory, he thinks the worst that could happen is that the parent volunteers won t show up they don t , the kids will be rude they are or the free lunch will be terrible it is.Then a leaking pipe sprays Peter and the students with a mysterious pink goo and the worst that could happen spikes from inconvenient to catastrophic At first, the goo s side effects are mild short temperedness, sawdust scented B.O and an unquenchable craving for bacon Then things get spooky Peter s fingers start falling off, his students forget how to read, no one has to pee ever and empathy for human suffering plummets, especially if anyone gets between them and their bacon.Peter can t figure out what s happening surely he s not a zombie At no time in any movie does a zombie drive a car and count on his reattached fingers the ways in which he is not a zombie, and anyway, Peter craves bacon, not brains But normal people don t put their bodies back together with staple guns and thumbtacks, or contemplate biting off ears Peter s definitely not fit to be around his children, and his mother in law temporarily adopts them.Peter s children are all he has left, and he ll do anything to be with them again He races across the country in a stolen ambulance to face down pinstriped bureaucrats, affectionate farm girls and monsters plucked from mythology in his search for the cure if it exists to his horrifying condition All Day Breakfast will satisfy all appetites for the visceral, the violent and the hilarious.

About The Author

Adam Lewis Schroeder grew up in Vernon BC and completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia in 1999 He has since traveled widely and published stories in than a dozen journals and anthologies In 2001 his short fiction collection Kingdom of Monkeys was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award His novel Empress of Asia was published by Raincoast in 2006 and Thomas Dunne in the US in 2008 a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and Books in Canada First Novel Award, it was also selected by the Globe Mail as one of the best books of the year Douglas McIntyre published his most recent novel, In the Fabled East, in Spring 2010 it was selected by as one of the best books of the year and was a finalist for the Commonwealth Regional Writers Prize In addition Adam is a columnist for CBC Radio One and a Creative Writing instructor at UBC Okanagan He lives in Penticton BC with his wife and kids.

Perhaps this book deserves another star for trying. But I feel stingy. This book about zombies tries to be both novel and significant. It does try to say something about the military industrial complex, and corporate greed; it tries to connect this greed with libidinous energy. It also tries to be funny, and manages to be funny at times. It's prose tries to be fanciful in its use of simile. Some similes work, some don't. It even tries to present characters of some substance, but here I think it [...]

Horror and Literary in a Full Meal Deal (bacon included)Reading All Day Breakfast was a full meal deal. Reminiscent of Douglas Copeland’s Generation X in intelligence, wit, pop culture references, and social commentary, I was fully satisfied with this epic about modern life, loss, corporate greed, and um… zombies.I tend to do a balance of two types of reading in the summer, one tasty, empty bestseller followed by something substantial and nutritious. Adam Lewis Schroeder’s novel did this i [...]

I really wanted to love this book. On paper it has everything. Bacon, intelligent zombies, local writer, what more could you ask for. Well, it turns out, a writer who can write. There is something hugely missing from the writer's style. The characters other than the protagonist fall so flat I couldn't form a vision of them at all. The story is jagged and the protagonist's intentions are fuzzy, incoherent. I was left wondering who all these kids were, sorely disappointed, but with a pervasive des [...]

Short and sweet: This did not connect with me on any level. The writing is such that it feels deliberately truncated, with interactions between characters often feeling semi-random and tangential — and to that end, so much of this book could have been left on the cutting room floor, and to its benefit (it's easily 100 pages too long for what it is). I imagine this is done in an attempt to be funny, but there's no inherent rhythm to Schroeder's sarcasm, and the characters and parody fall flat.

It was an interesting take on the zombie concept. Not horror per se, but more of a political thriller. Slow to start but certainly built some momentum as the story went along. Equal parts comedy, action and drama All -Day Breakfast should entice most readers of science fiction and possibly horror genres.